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[Distant] Recent Reading.
Mar. 23rd, 2018 08:50 pmIt is a strange world. For one thing, Grant Morrison has written the superhero origin story of Santa Claus. It has an evil duke in a black hood, and a goat-demon, and the Santa is so rugged that, even in a blizzard, he doesn't know the meaning of the word 'sleeves'. I find all this delightful, and there is lovely art. It does not turn out to be a thing I needed to read, as opposed to glance at, but I am not sorry to have read it.
For another thing, in the just-arrived birthday-present-to-self copy of Aye, and Gomorrah, I find that Samuel Delaney has written a homage to James Thurber. This is even more delightful. Delaney does not quite succeed at doing The Thirteen Clocks, but I am pleased he cared to try. Meanwhile, The Star Pit is a story which would justify the whole collection on its own.
(Sorry, Grant Morrison, but your duke is not as evil as the duke in The Thirteen Clocks. I do not think any duke could be. Some drink the blood of thousands, but they just haven't got the style).
Fantasy and sf are my usual genres, so it was interesting to finally get around to some John Le Carré. Smiley's People is probably a peculiar first choice, being the book about the very end of spymaster George Smiley's career, the one where all the chickens (knew I what they were) come home to roost. But there's a lot to be said for going with the book which causes me to take it off the shelf. If I try for another one which for some reason lacks that spark of interest, I tend to put it down again. (I have started The Little Drummer Girl twice, and fully intend to read even so far as its third chapter someday).
I'm used to the kind of ending which is attentive to the whole book before it, especially those endings which connect directly to the beginning. But Smiley's People is a story about the discovery of the story. It is constructed not as a shape but as a manipulation, a tool for the achievement of maximum tension. The character whose viewpoint we are first given is not ultimately important to the book, which consists of people telling Smiley the real story. By the time he has learned enough to attempt to manipulate that story, I was surprised to find that I had gone from being gently admiring of the book's style to caring powerfully about the outcome, without noticing the transition.
How strange, I wrote all that a year ago and then wandered off, leaving a few now-altered sentences broken in the last paragraph. Clearly it must be posted, if not to be wasted: I had already forgotten I ever thought most of those things.
So this will remain a journal that maybe sort of exists, but does not go so far as to definitely exist...
For another thing, in the just-arrived birthday-present-to-self copy of Aye, and Gomorrah, I find that Samuel Delaney has written a homage to James Thurber. This is even more delightful. Delaney does not quite succeed at doing The Thirteen Clocks, but I am pleased he cared to try. Meanwhile, The Star Pit is a story which would justify the whole collection on its own.
(Sorry, Grant Morrison, but your duke is not as evil as the duke in The Thirteen Clocks. I do not think any duke could be. Some drink the blood of thousands, but they just haven't got the style).
Fantasy and sf are my usual genres, so it was interesting to finally get around to some John Le Carré. Smiley's People is probably a peculiar first choice, being the book about the very end of spymaster George Smiley's career, the one where all the chickens (knew I what they were) come home to roost. But there's a lot to be said for going with the book which causes me to take it off the shelf. If I try for another one which for some reason lacks that spark of interest, I tend to put it down again. (I have started The Little Drummer Girl twice, and fully intend to read even so far as its third chapter someday).
I'm used to the kind of ending which is attentive to the whole book before it, especially those endings which connect directly to the beginning. But Smiley's People is a story about the discovery of the story. It is constructed not as a shape but as a manipulation, a tool for the achievement of maximum tension. The character whose viewpoint we are first given is not ultimately important to the book, which consists of people telling Smiley the real story. By the time he has learned enough to attempt to manipulate that story, I was surprised to find that I had gone from being gently admiring of the book's style to caring powerfully about the outcome, without noticing the transition.
How strange, I wrote all that a year ago and then wandered off, leaving a few now-altered sentences broken in the last paragraph. Clearly it must be posted, if not to be wasted: I had already forgotten I ever thought most of those things.
So this will remain a journal that maybe sort of exists, but does not go so far as to definitely exist...
